Casualties in a heavy Russian shelling in eastern Ukraine while the Russian army seized new territories

Kyiv announced that three people were killed in Russian shelling that targeted the east of the country on Tuesday afternoon, after US President Donald Trump gave Moscow 50 days to reach a peace agreement with Kyiv.

“Two dead, two wounded: Law enforcement units documented the toll of a new enemy attack in the Kupiansk region,” the Kharkov Prosecutor General’s Office said, noting that the two men killed.

For its part, authorities in the Sumy region announced that “the enemy opened artillery fire on the outskirts of the town of Velika Pisarevka”.

For its part, Russian forces announced that they had taken control of two more villages in Donetsk, continuing their advance in this eastern Ukrainian region.

In the western Russian city of Voronezh, local authorities announced on Tuesday that a Ukrainian drone attack had injured 27 people.

Earlier on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump stressed that Ukraine should not target Moscow, after a media report indicated that he urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to attack the Russian capital.

Trump raised the possibility of a potential counterattack with Zelensky, asking his Ukrainian counterpart if his country would be able to target Moscow if Washington supplied it with long-range weapons.

But when asked by reporters at the White House whether Zelensky should target Moscow, Trump said, “He shouldn’t”.

When asked if he was prepared to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles, he replied, “No, we are not looking forward to that”.

Trump spoke to Zelensky on July 4, the day after his talks with Vladimir Putin, as  Trump discussed sending US-made ATACMS missiles to Ukraine.

Trump, who previously pledged to end the Ukraine war within a day of returning to the White House, recently expressed his “disappointment” with Putin, who continued to attack Ukraine, as if his communications with the US president were meaningless.